Story of My Life Part 31

Jelf told a great deal that was interesting about the King: how, as Prince George, he would insist upon playing at being his Eton f.a.g, brush his clothes, make his toast, &c.: that he was with the Prince at the time of the fatal accident which caused his blindness, when, in the garden at Kew, having just given half-a-crown to a beggar, he was whisking his purse round and round, when the ring at the end went into his eye. A fortnight's anxiety followed, and then came the great grief of his dear Prince one day saying to him when out shooting, 'Will you give me your arm, sir? I don't see quite so well as I ought to do. I think we had better go home.' Afterwards, instead of murmuring, the Prince only said, 'Those who will not obey must suffer: you told me not to whisk my things about in that way, and I disobeyed: it is right that I should suffer for it.'

"He gave many beautiful pictures of the King's after life: how the dear blind King, who bears no outward mark of his misfortune, always turns to the sun, as if seeking the light: of his marriage with his cousin of Saxe-Altenbourg, a true love-match: that he, the old tutor, was never forgotten, and that on his last birthday, when he least expected it, a royal telegram announced--'The King, the Queen, and the royal children of Hanover wish Dr. Jelf many happy new years.' The King always writes to Dr. and Mrs. Jelf on their wedding-day, which even their own family do not always remember, and on their silver-wedding he sent them a beautiful portrait of himself.

"Arthur, I imagine, rather likes having me here, though no outsiders would imagine so; but he finds me useful after a fashion, and is much annoyed if I allude to ever going into lodgings. He certainly does _exactly_ what he likes when I am there, and is quite as unreserved in his ways as if n.o.body whatever was present.

I am generally down first. He comes in pre-engrossed, and there is seldom any morning salutation. At breakfast I sit (he wills it so) at the end of the table, pour out his excessively weak tea, and put the heavy b.u.t.tered buns which he loves within his easy reach. When we are alone, I eat my own bread and b.u.t.ter in silence; but if undergraduates breakfast with us, it is my duty, if I know anything about it, so to turn the conversation that he may learn what their 'lines' are, and converse accordingly. Certainly the merry nonsense and childlike buoyancy which cause his breakfast parties to be so delightful, make the contrast of his silent irresponsiveness rather trying when we are alone--it is such a complete 'you are not worth talking to.' However, I have learnt to enjoy the first, and to take no notice of the other; indeed, if I can do so quite effectually, it generally ends in his becoming pleasanter. In amiable moments he will sometimes glance at my MSS., and give them a sanction like that of Cardinal Richelieu--'Accepi, legi, probavi.' After breakfast, he often has something for me to do for him, great plans, maps, or drawings for his lectures, on huge sheets of paper, which take a good deal of time, but which he never notices except when the moment comes for using them. All morning he stands at his desk by the study window (where I see him sometimes from the garden, which he expects me to look after), and he writes sheet after sheet, which he sometimes tears up and flings to rejoin the letters of the morning, which cover the carpet in all directions.[162] It would never do for him to marry, a wife would be so annoyed at his hopelessly untidy ways; at his tearing every new book to pieces, for instance, because he is too impatient to cut it open (though I now do a good deal in this way). Meantime, as Goethe says, 'it is the errors of men that make them amiable,' and I believe he is all the better loved for his peculiarities.

Towards the middle of the day, I sometimes have an indication that he has no one to walk with him, and would wish me to go, and he likes me to be in the way then, in case I am wanted, but I am never to expect to be talked to during the walk. If not required, I amuse myself, or go on with my own work, and indeed I seldom see Arthur till the evening, when, if any one dines for whom he thinks it worth while to come out of himself, he is very pleasant, and sometimes very entertaining."

My mother spent a great part of the spring of 1859 at Clifton, whither I went to visit her, afterwards making a _tourette_ by myself to Salisbury, Southampton, Beaulieu, and Winchester.

"_Salisbury, April 12, 1859._--At 8-1/2 I was out on bleak Salisbury Plain, where, as the driver of my gig observed, 'it is a whole coat colder than in the valley.' What an immense desert it is! The day, so intensely grey, with great black clouds sweeping across the sky, was quite in character with the long lines of desolate country. At last we turned off the road over the turf, and in the distance rose the gigantic temple, with the sun shining through the apertures in the stones. It was most majestic and impressive, not a creature in sight, except a quant.i.ty of rabbits scampering about, and a distant shepherd."

The latter part of June 1859 I spent most happily in a pony-carriage tour in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire with my friend George Sheffield, who had just pa.s.sed his examination at the Foreign Office. It was on this occasion that, as we were driving under a park wall in Buckinghamshire, I said to George, "Inside that park is a very fine old house, and inside the house is a very fine old sundial. We will go to see the house, and we will take away the sundial;" and we _did_, though at that moment I did not even know the name of the people who lived there. The old house was the Vatche, which had belonged to my great-great-grandfather, Bishop Hare, who married its heiress in the reign of George II., and I had heard of the sundial from the churchwarden of Chalfont, with whom I had had some correspondence about my ancestor's tomb. It was made on the marriage of Bishop Hare with Miss Alston and bore his arms. The family of Allen, then living at the Vatche, allowed us to see the house, and my enthusiasm at sight of the sundial, which was lying neglected in a corner, so worked upon the feelings of Mrs. Allen, that she gave it me. It is now in the garden at Holmhurst.

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_June 16._--I have enjoyed a visit to the Henry Leycesters at White Place, which lies low in the meadows, but has the charm of a little creek full of luxuriant water-plants, down which Henry Leycester punts his guests into the Thames opposite Clifden; and how picturesque are the old yew-trees and winding walks of that beautiful place. Henry Leycester, to look upon, is like one of the magnificent Vand.y.k.es in the Brignole Palace at Genoa. Little Mrs.

Leycester is a timid shrinking creature, who daily becomes terribly afraid of the domestic ghost (a lady carrying her head) as evening comes on. 'Imagine my feelings, Mr. Hare,' she says, 'my awful position as a wife and a mother, when my husband is away, and I am left alone in the long evenings with _her_.'"

"_June 17, Christ Church._--Last week the Dean, with much imprudence, punished two Christ Church men most severely for the same offence, but _one more than the other_. The next night the Deanery garden was broken into, the rose-trees torn up and flower-beds destroyed, the children's swing cut down, and the name of the injured man cut in large letters in the turf. It has created great indignation.

"My chief work, now I am at Oxford, is in the Bodleian, where I have much to look out and refer to, and where everything is made delightful by Mr. c.o.xe, the librarian,[163] who is not only the most accurate and learned person in the world, but also the most sympathetic, lively, and lovable. 'Never mind, dear boy,' he always says, the more trouble I give him. Anything more unlike the cut-and-dried type of Oxford Dons cannot be imagined. He has given me a plant (Linaria purpurea) from the tomb of Cicero.

"I should like to take my Master's degree, but the fees will be about ?20. I could then vote at the election. I should certainly vote against Gladstone, though Arthur says he should vote for him 'with both hands and both feet.' ... I have great satisfaction in being here now, in feeling that I can be useful to Arthur, in preparing drawings for his lectures, &c., also that he really prefers my presence to my absence."

"_July 4._--I sate up till twelve last night preparing 'the bidding prayer' for Arthur (who was to preach the 'Act Sermon to-day at St.

Mary's)--immensely long, as the _whole_ of the founders and benefactors have to be mentioned. Imagine my horror when, after the service, the Vice-Chancellor came up to Arthur and demanded to know why _he_ had not been prayed for! I had actually omitted his name of all others! Arthur said it was all the fault of 'Silva.n.u.s.' In his sermon on Deborah, Arthur described how the long vacation, 'like the ancient river, the river Kishon,' was about to form a barrier, and might wash away all the past and supply a halting-place from which to begin a new life: that the bondage caused by concealment of faults or debts might now be broken: that now, when undergraduates were literally 'going to their father,'

they might apply the story of the Prodigal Son, and obtain that freedom which is truth."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HODNET CHURCH.]

In July I paid a first visit to my cousins, the Heber Percys, at Hodnet Hall, in order to meet Countess Valsamachi (Mrs. Heber Percy's mother).[164] The old Hodnet Hall was a long low two-storied house, like an immense cottage, or rather like a beehive, from the abundant family life which overcrowded it. The low dining-room was full of curious pictures of the Vernons, whose heiress married one of the Hebers, but when the pictures had been sent up to London to be cleaned, the cleaner had cut all their legs off. At this time a debt of ?40,000 existed upon the Hodnet estate. Mr. Percy's father, the Bishop of Carlisle, had promised to pay it off when certain fees came in. At last the fees were paid, and the papers were in the house, only awaiting the signature of the Bishop. That day he fell down dead. When it was told to his children, they only said, "It is the will of G.o.d; we must not complain."

I had much conversation with Lady Valsamachi. Talking of religion, she spoke of an atheist who once grumbled at the dispensation of a gourd having such a slender stem, while an acorn was supported by an oak.

"When he had done speaking, the acorn fell upon his nose; had it been the gourd, his nose would have been no more!"

We walked to where Stoke had been, so tenderly connected with past days.

All was altered, except the Terne flowing through reedy meadows. It was less painful to me to see it than on my last visit, but cost me many pangs.

I joined my mother at Toft, where our dear cousin Charlotte Leycester was acting as mistress of the house, and gave us a cordial welcome to the old family home. Greatly did my mother enjoy being there, and the sight of familiar things and people. Especially was she welcomed by an old woman named Betty Strongitharm; I remember how this old woman said, "When I am alone, I think, and think, and think, and the end of all my thinking is that Christ is all in all ... but I do not want to go to heaven alone; I want to take a many others along with me."

JOURNAL.

"When we left Toft, we went to our cousins at Th.o.r.n.ycroft. At Th.o.r.n.ycroft was a labourer named Rathbone. One winter day, when his wife was in her confinement, she was in great want of something from Macclesfield, which her husband undertook to get for her when he went to his work in the town, but he said that he must take his little girl of ten years old with him, that she might bring it back to her mother. The woman entreated him not to take the child, as the snow was very deep, and she feared that she might not find her way home again. However, the father insisted, and set off, taking his little girl with him. The purchase was made and the child set off to return home with it, but she--never arrived.

"When Rathbone reached home in the evening, and found that his child had not appeared, he was in an agony of terror, and set off at once to search for her. He traced her to Monk's Heath. People had seen her there, and directed her back to Henbury, but she seemed to have lost her way again. Rathbone next traced her to a farmhouse at Peover, where the people had had the barbarity to turn her out at night and direct her back to Henbury. Then all trace of her was lost.

"At last Rathbone was persuaded by his friends and neighbours to apply to a woman whom they called 'the White Witch' at Manchester, and to her he went. She told him to look into a gla.s.s and tell her what he saw there. He looked into the gla.s.s and said, 'I see a man holding up his hat.' 'Well,' she said, 'then go on with your search, and when you meet a man holding up his hat, he will tell you where your child is.' So he returned and went again to search, taking another man with him. At length, as they were going down a lane, Rathbone exclaimed, 'There he is!'--'Who?' said the companion, for he only saw a man running and holding up his hat.

That man told them that he had just found the body of a child under a tree, and there, near a pond, frozen to death, lay Rathbone's little girl.

"When we were at Th.o.r.n.ycroft, Rathbone was still overwhelmed with contrition for what he considered the sin of having consulted the witch."

From Cheshire we went to the English Lakes. The curious old King's Arms Inn at Lancaster, described by d.i.c.kens, was then in existence, and it was a pleasure to sleep there, and walk in the morning upon the high terrace in front of the church and castle. From Ambleside, we spent a delightful day in making the round by Dungeon Ghyll and Blea Tarn, where we drew the soft grey peaks of Langdale Pikes, framed in dark heather-covered rocks, and in the foreground the blue tarn sleeping amid the pastures. From Keswick I ascended Skiddaw, and had a glorious view across the billows of mountains to the sea and the faint outlines of the Isle of Man. Another delightful day was spent with the mother and Lea in Borrowdale. One of the most beautiful effects I have ever seen was in crossing to b.u.t.termere by Borrowdale Hawse, a tremendous wild mountain chasm, into which the setting sun was pouring floods of crimson light as we descended, smiting into blood the waters of the little torrent which was struggling down beside us through the rocks. We arrived at b.u.t.termere very late, and found not a single room unoccupied in the village, so had to return in the dark night to Keswick.

We were much interested in Dumfries, in many ways one of the most foreign-looking towns in Britain, where we remained several days, making excursions to the exquisitely graceful ruins of Lincluden Abbey; to New Abbey (glorious in colour), founded by Devorgilda to contain the heart of John Baliol; to the Irongray Church, where Helen Walker, the original of Jeannie Deans, is buried, and where, on a rocky knoll under some old oaks, is a desolate Covenanter's grave; to Ellisland, the primitive cottage-home of Burns, overlooking the purple hills and clear rushing Nith; and to the great desolate castle of Caerlaverock near Solway Firth. The old churchyard of Dumfries reminded us of P?re la Chaise in its forest of tombs, but was far more picturesque. Burns is buried there, with all his family. The exaggerated worship which follows Burns in Scotland rather sets one against him, and shows how many a saint got into the Calendar; for there are many there whose private lives would as little bear inspection as his. His son, formerly a clerk in Somerset House, had long been living at Dumfries upon a pension, and died there three years before our visit. Many are the old red sandstone gravestones in Dumfries and its neighbourhood bearing inscriptions to Covenanters, telling how they were "martyrs for adhering to the word of G.o.d, Christ's kingly government in his house, and the covenanted work of Reformation against tyrannie, perjury, and prelacie."

Amongst our Roman friends had been Mrs. Fotheringham of Fotheringham, whom we visited at the so-called Fotheringham Castle, a comfortable modern house, in Forfarshire. We went with her to spend a day with the charming old Thomas Erskine,[165] author of the "Essays," and since well known from his "Letters." With him lived his two beautiful and venerable old sisters, Mrs. Stirling and Mrs. Paterson, and their home of Linlathen contained many n.o.ble Italian pictures. Another excursion was to visit Miss Stirling Graham at Duntrune, a beautiful place overlooking the blue firth and bay of St. Andrews. Miss Graham was the auth.o.r.ess and heroine of "Mystifications," intimately bound up with all the literary a.s.sociations of Edinburgh in the first half of the nineteenth century.

She was also the nearest surviving relation of Claverhouse, and Duntrune was filled with relics of him.[166] She was a great bee-fancier and bee-friend, and would allow the bees to settle all over her. "My dear, where can you have lived all your life not to know about bees?" she said to a young lady who asked her some simple questions about them. At Fotheringham, the princ.i.p.al relic is a portrait of "the Flower of Yarrow" (said by Sir Walter Scott to have been such an ugly old woman at seventy), singing from a piece of music. The last cannibals in Scotland lived in a glen near Fotheringham, where carters and ploughmen were perpetually disappearing. The glen was known to be the abode of robbers, and at last a strong force was sent against them, and they were all killed, except one little girl of ten years old, whom it was thought a shame to destroy. She had not been with her preservers many days before she said, "Why do you never eat man's flesh? for if you once ate that, you would never wish to eat anything else again." My mother made an excursion from Fotheringham to see Panmure, where the housekeeper said to her that her Lord[167] was "very bad, for he had not killed a single _beast_ that year."

_To_ MY MOTHER.

"_August 22._--I went early by rail to Stonehaven, and walked to Dunottar. The sea was of the softest Mediterranean blue, and the walk along the edge of the cliffs, through the cornfields, looking down first on the old town and then on the different little coves with their curiously twisted and richly coloured rocks, most delightful. The castle is hidden by the uplands at first, but crowns the ridge of a magnificent rock, which runs far out into the sea, with a line of battered towers. In the depths are reefs covered with seaweed, between which the sea flows up in deep green pools.

"A narrow ledge of rock, of which you can scarcely make out whether it is natural or artificial, connects the castle with the mainland, and here through an arch in the wall you look down into a second bay, where the precipices, crested by a huge red fragment of tower, descend direct upon the water. High up in one of the turrets lives the keeper, a girl, who said that she was so used to climbing, that she could go anywhere where there was the least rest for the sole of her foot; that she did not care to have anything to hold on by, and had never known what it was to be giddy. The 'Whigs' Vault' is shown, in which a hundred and twenty Covenanters were chained, and, beneath it, the awfully close stifling dungeon in which forty-eight were confined, and many of them suffocated. The place still remains where they were let down from the more airy vault above, and also the hole through which their food was transmitted to them. On one side of the dungeon is the well of brackish water which is said (as in the prison of St. Peter) to have sprung up in one night to quench their thirst; on the other, the hole which, in their agonised desperation, they scratched with their hands through the wall, and by which five-and-twenty tried to escape, but were all dashed to pieces against the rocks or taken, except two; while, if the dark night had only allowed them to see it, there is a little footpath near, by which they might all have pa.s.sed in safety. In the castle also are the chamber in which the Regalia of Scotland were concealed, and the well once supplied by pipes, the cutting of which by Cromwell caused the surrender of the garrison."

"_August 23, Eccles Greig, Montrose._--This is a charming place belonging to Kyrie's[168] father, and of which he is the heir. Miss Grant drove me to-day to Denfenella, a beautiful ravine of tremendous depth, where a lovely burn dashes over a precipice, and then rushes away to the sea through depths of rock and fern, amid which it makes a succession of deep shadowy pools. Endless are the Scottish stories about this place:

"That Queen Fenella--the fairy queen--first washed her clothes in the bright shining Morne, and then walked on the tops of the trees, by which means she escaped.

"That Queen Fenella, having murdered her husband, fled to Denfenella, where she flung herself over the rocks to escape justice.

"That Queen Fenella, widow of Kenneth III., after the death of her husband and her own escape from the Castle of Kincardine, fled to Denfenella, where she was taken and put to death.

"That Queen Fenella loved a beautiful youth, but that her enemies tried to force her to marry another; and that, rather than do so, she fled from her father's castle, which is at an immense distance from this, but, on reaching Denfenella, she felt that farther escape was hopeless, and let herself float down the stream and be carried away over the waterfall into the sea.

"All the stories, however, agree in one fact, that at midnight the beautiful Fenella still always walks in the braes where she died, and still washes her clothes in the bright shining Morne.

"We went on to the 'Came of Mathers,' a wild cove on the seash.o.r.e with a ruined castle on the farthest point of an inaccessible precipice, beneath which the green waves rush through deep rifts of the rock, which is worn into caves and arches. The Sheriff of these parts was once very unpopular, and the lairds complained to King James, who said in a joke that it would be a very good thing if the Sheriff were boiled and cut up and made into browse. When the lairds heard this, they beguiled the Sheriff to Gavoch, where they had a huge caldron prepared, into which they immediately popped him, and boiled him, and cut him up. Then, literally to carry out the King's words, they each ate a part of him. Having done this, they were all so dreadfully afraid of King James, that they sought every possible means of escape, and the Laird of Arbuthnot, who had been one of the most forward in boiling the Sheriff, built this impregnable castle, where he lived in defiance of the King.

"Beneath the castle is a deep cleft in the rock, which seems endless. It is said to continue in a subterranean pa.s.sage to Lauriston. The drummer of Lauriston once went up it, and tried to work his way through, but he never was seen again; and at night, it is said, that the drummer of Lauriston is still heard beating his drum in the cavern beneath."

Upon leaving Eccles Greig, I joined my mother, and went with her to St.

Andrews, which I had always greatly desired that she should see. Even more than the wonderful charm of the place at this time was that of seeing much of the genial, witty, eccentric Provost, Sir Hugh Lyon Playfair. He first came up to me when I was drawing--an old man in a cloak--and invited me into his garden, whither we returned several times. That garden was the most extraordinary place, representing all the important facts of the history of the world, from chaos and the creation of the sun down to the Reform Bill, "whence," said Sir Hugh, "you may date the decline of the British Empire." On the same chart were marked the lengths of all the princ.i.p.al ships, while representations of the planets indicated their distance from the sun! No verbal description, however, can recall the genial oddity of the garden's owner. On Sat.u.r.days he used to open his garden to the public, and follow in the crowd to hear their opinion of himself. He said they would often say, "Ah! the poor Provost, he has more money than brains; he is sadly deficient here," pointing to the forehead. Once some of the people said to him, "We do so want to see the Provost; how _would_ it be possible to see Sir Hugh?"--"Oh," he answered, "I think you had better go and look in at the windows, and you will be sure to see him." So they all crowded to the windows, but there was no one to be seen. "Oh," he said, "I'll tell you why that is: that is because he is under the table. It is a way Sir Hugh has. He is so dreadfully shy, that whenever he hears any one coming, he always goes under the table directly." Presently, on going out, they met an official, who, coming up, touched his hat and said, "If you please, Sir Hugh, I've spoken to that policeman, as you ordered me,"

and the horrified people discovered their mistake, to Sir Hugh's intense amus.e.m.e.nt.

JOURNAL.

"_August 30._--A stormy day, but I went by train to Tynehead for Crichton. Two old ladies of ninety got into the carriage after me.

An old gentleman opposite made a civil speech to one of them, upon which she tartly replied, 'I don't hear a word, for I thank Almighty G.o.d for all His mercies, and most of all that He has made me quite deaf, for if I heard I should be obliged to speak to _you_, and I don't _want_ to speak to you.'

"Crichton is a red ruined castle on a hill, with a distance of purple moorland, and inside is the courtyard so exactly described in 'Marmion.' With storm raging round it, it was awfully desolate.

Close by is an old stumpy-towered thoroughly Scotch church."